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i managed to corral david lawrence, a qa manager, at the red hat booth, after waiting in line for a while. the red hat folks seemed a little bit secretive but i finally managed to wheedle some information out of them about their upcoming release: edit menus, better font management, tool integration, bug fixes and better hardware support are all some of the things to look forward to.

thankfully, red hat seems to be listening to the linux community when it comes to the development of their desktop. i asked the inevitable question about a vpn wizard but the guy we talked to hadn't heard anything about it. i think it's high time that all distros get an integrated vpn wizard on their desktops! there is no need for linux to be lagging behind windows in this area.

when i initially saw the emperor linux booth, i thought for a minute that they were a new distro. it turns out that they specialize in the sales of pre-configured linux laptops for companies and individuals that want stable, easy-to use laptops. el offers mandrake, suse, red hat and other leading distros. prices generally start in the $1,800 range all the way up to $4,000 for a machine. you can expect prices to be a couple hundred dollars over street prices; prices are updated regularly at the www.emperorlinux.com site. lincoln durry, president of emperor linux, and john hall, a r&d manager, spoke with me for a few minutes.

the linux fund is a non-profit organization that supports open source projects by offering credit cards that feature tux the penguin. each time you use it, a portion of your purchase will go toward an open source project. i chatted with candace ramcharan, the marketing manager of linux fund. she told me that the feedback so far about the credit card has been very positive and that folks thought it was "soooo cute." to find out more about the linux fund or to get your tux credit card, go to www.linuxfund.org.

osef is an organization that helps promote the use of linux in grades k-12. osef also offers consulting expertise as well as a free demo cd of linux and linux based education programs. educators can pop the cd into any computer and immediately begin using linux and various education programs. you can make a contribution to the osef on their site at www.osef.org.

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About the Author

Jim manages the PC Magazine and ExtremeTech forums, and is responsible for building community in the forums on both sites. He started managing PC Mag's forum on ZiffNet on CompuServe many years ago. He then transferred the staff and expertise to the Web. He left ZDNet when it moved to San Francisco and came back to Ziff after the split from ZDNet, ... See Full Bio

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